'Pokemon Go' international rollout will be 'paused' as players overload the system

People love "Pokémon Go," the new smash-hit iPhone and Android game that lets you catch pocket monsters in real life, so much that the strain on the servers keeps bringing it crashing down for most people.

Niantic, the Google/Alphabet spinoff that co-created "Pokémon Go" with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, is aware of the problem and hard at work on a fix, CEO John Hanke tells Business Insider.

And while they fix the server capacity, international rollout of the game to countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands is "paused until we're comfortable," Hanke tells Business Insider.

It's not uncommon for online games like "Pokémon Go" to have first-day launch jitters. Hanke says that even knowing how much interest there would be in a new smartphone "Pokémon" game, Niantic was still caught by surprise by the phenomenon that it's become.

"We thought the game would be popular, but it obviously struck a nerve," Hanke says. 

And Hanke says that Niantic has already made great strides in fixing the problem, with "a great run" of server availability on Thursday evening Pacific Time.

Meanwhile, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels couldn't resist a joke at Niantic's expense, offering the help of the Amazon Web Services cloud-hosting service in keeping the game available:

"Pokémon Go" launched in the United States on late Wednesday evening, following an initial rollout in Australia and New Zealand.